i6 THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



which the yoke, &c, filtered in fine powder, when the shell was 

 shaken. The egg is, I believe, that of an owl, but is a little smaller 

 than any I have seen. No spots or markings can be discerned with 

 certainty, and doubtless the shell was pure white when laid. The 

 tower of Middleton Church (of which my father is Vicar) has walls 

 six feet thick, and outside it is covered with an enormous tree of ivy, 

 which clasps it on three sides to the top. The building is in sad need 

 of restoration, but a good deal has been done lately to stop further 

 decay. It would interest me to learn if any reader of the Young 

 Naturalist knows of a similar case of an egg being buried so many 

 years. — (Miss) E. Hutchinson, Grantsfield, Leominster. 



The Classification of Coleoptera Historically 

 Considered. 



By W. E. SHARP * , 



In any general consideration of the component entities of organic 

 nature, what strikes us as perhaps the most salient and most impor- 

 tant fact of their being, is that capabibity of arrangement in ordered 

 graduation which they exhibit and which has been recognized since 

 first the attention of mankind was directed to their observation ; that 

 every creature in which is the breath of life, from the lichen which 

 encrusts the primceval granite, and the nomad which vivifies the drop, 

 up to man, has its place in an ordered whole, bears relationship and 

 affinity to its fellows and is approximated more or less closely to a 

 possible typical conception. This is a quality which has elevated the 

 study of nature from a recreation to a science, and has for thoughtful 

 minds of every age invested it with a deep and mysterious significance, 

 long before it became possible to establish on such premises, the 

 greatest generalization of modern times. And it is because this possi- 

 bility of classification afforded by creation, and this power of seeing 

 it evinced by the human mind, seems to me to be of considerable 

 importance and interest, that I have asked your attention to its mani- 

 festation in a very small section of the articulate division of the 

 Animal Kingdom, and attempted to trace, how the conception of 

 approximated affinities in one order of the class Insecta has originated, 



* A Paper read before the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society. 



